Ukrainian lawmakers delegated their three candidates to a special commission which will form the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. This completes the nomination process for a body that will select the head of the new agency with the mandate to investigate top level corruption, which has been dubbed "Ukraine's FBI."
Deputies gave 292
votes for candidates that were offered by the parliamentary
anti-corruption committee. They were Giovanni Kessler, an Italian
prosecutor and director of the European Anti-Fraud Office; Yevhen
Nyshchuk, former minister of culture and the host of the main stage
in the protestors’ camp during the EuroMaidan and Orange revolutions;
and constitutional lawyer Viktor Musiyaka.
Kessler was andorsed
by Samopomich (Self-reliance) party, Yulia Tymoshenko’s
Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) and Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party.
Nyshchuk was endorsed by President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc.
Musiyaka was
selected by
Yatsenyuk’s
People Front.
Earlier president
Poroshenko also delegated his three candidates to the commission –
Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar
parliament; Yevhen Zakharov, head of Kharkiv Human Right Group; and
Yaroslav Hrytsak, a Ukrainian historian.
The Cabinet of
Ministers delegated Yosyf Zisels,
chairman of the Association of Jewish organizations and communities
of Ukraine and member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group;
Oleksandra Yanovska, ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human
Rights; and Yuriy Butusov, chief editor of the news portal
censor.net.ua.
“Verkhovna Rada,
president and government have finished forming the commission on
electing the head of the National Anticorruption Bureau. This is
history,” Mustafa Nayem, a lawmaker and former journalist, said on
his Facebook page. The mood and chatter in the parliament was that
the tackling of corruption among Ukrainian top officials now really
begins.
“One task for
launching the National Anti-Corruption Bureau is fully done,” said
Yehor Sobolev, a lawmaker and a head of parliamentary anticorruption
committee. “Besides this till the New Year we also have to adopt
the funding for the bureau, establish high salaries for investigators
and to ban hiring those who had been already ‘fighting’ against
corruption in Ukraine.”
The head of this
bureau is expected to be chosen a few weeks before the law on
Anti-Corruption bureau takes effect at the end of January. The
commission will review all applicants and shortlist three candidates.
The president will then make the final selection, with the consent of
parliament.
The nation’s main
Anti-Corruption body is expected to be fully functional in the middle
of 2015.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Oksana Lyachynska can be reached at
[email protected].
